Prairie Wanderings: Horseman Ed Miller's last ride
By PAUL G. JANTZEN
Contributing writer
Back in July of 1864, Ed Miller, 18-year-old son of Nelson and Jane Miller, was substituting as a mail carrier along the Santa Fe Trail between Marion Centre (now Marion) and Fuller's Ranch in McPherson County when he was overtaken by Cheyenne (or Kiowa or Comanche) Indians and killed.
Or, young Miller rode to Fuller's Ranch to warn residents that Indians were raiding in the area. He was killed by Indians before completing his mission.
Or, Miller was on his way to inform those at the ranch of a relative's illness and was ambushed by a party of 20 (4 or 5) Indians. The ranchers, suspecting that Indians were raiding in the area, watched through a telescope from the top of the house as a lone horseman was surrounded by Indians and then disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Or, Miller was carrying mail from Marion to King City, about a mile east of the present-day city of Elyria. On his return, Indians overtook him and killed him.
And some say that Miller rode for the Pony Express.
All of the above reports, and others, refer to the same incident but differ in details.
We know that the Santa Fe Trail was one of America's great commercial highways from 1822 to 1872 and reached about 780 miles from Independence, Mo., to Santa Fe, N.M. One of the trading ranches en route was Fuller's Ranch, established in 1855 to provide accommodations for traders taking freight by pack horses and wagons. The ranch was located one or two miles south of present-day Galva, or eight miles west of Miller's encounter with the Indians.
According to the third scenario, Mrs. Lank Moore, In Marion, was very sick and requested that her mother, Mrs. Waterman, who was a nurse, come to see her. The Watermans lived at Turkey Creek Ranch, three miles south of present-day Galva. Lank Moore asked Nelson Miller to send one of his sons to bring Mrs. Waterman to care for her daughter. He sent Edward.
Two days later, the Watermans, having heard nothing from their sick daughter, went to Marion to see her. The Moores immediately asked the Watermans of the whereabouts of Ed Miller. They said they had not seen Miller but told them about the lone horseman and his encounter with the Indians. The next day, a party of four men from Marion went to search for Ed Miller. About 26 miles west of Marion, 50- yards from the Trail, they found his body in the weeds, riddled with arrows and bullets, speared, and scalped. They wrapped him in a blanket, carried him to a nearby hill, and buried him.
The fourth scenario has the young man trying to escape, but his horse gives out and the Indians kill the rider and scalp him. The people at Marion knew that he might encounter belligerent Indians, so, when he didn't return, they searched for him. They found his body on a little knoll about two miles east of Canton. They buried the body and marked his grave with a sandstone rock.
The fifth scenario seems unlikely as the Pony Express was discontinued in 1861 with the advent of the telegraph.
Currently, there appears to be general agreement that the 18-year-old man was Ed Miller, that he was killed by Indians in July of 1964, and that he was buried two miles east of Canton.
Some years later, a Mitchell Jones homesteaded the area where Ed Miller was buried. He found a wooden cross at Miller's grave and set that area aside as a cemetery.
A granitic quartzite marker now stands near the center of the cemetery placed in 1906 by the Daughters of the American Revolution and the State of Kansas. Behind this rock stands a black granite tombstone memorializing Ed Miller and surrounded by blooming peonies.
Additional stones mark the graves of others whose earthly lives ended here along the Santa Fe Trail. Many (probably most) of the graves are those of early white settlers in the area. Miller's is one of the few graves on the Trail marked as victims of the conflict between Native Americans and the descendants of European invaders.
Today, the cemetery is accessible two miles east of Canton on U.S. Highway 56, one half mile north, and a quarter mile east along the old railroad bed. Some tombstones have been vandalized, but one feels set apart here, boxed in by a thicket of Osage orange trees (the male trees are now in bloom), a few hackberries, and immigrant weeds invading from nearby fields. The songs of a western meadowlark, a dickcissel, and a brown thrasher seem in place here. And two eastern kingbirds fly in, one snatching an insect on the wing, then perching on a tombstone to enjoy its catch seem in place here.
I ponder the contrasts between the tranquillity of the present scene, the violence that spawned this cemetery 138 years ago, and the recent vandalism that destroyed some of these old tombstones.
(I acknowledge information from the McPherson County Old Mill Museum, the Marion City Historical Museum, Alex "Casey" Case, and Raymond Wiebe.)
